When we visit oral cultures we see that story telling is beyond art.
It is ritual, like polishing an heirloom. Stories are told the same in
every telling, spread over generations. Newpass, the Karuk Indian,
leaped from the second floor window 80 or 90 years ago to escape from
gold miner vigilantes in Orleans, not far from Black Bear. His
descendants still tell the story without hyperbole. They have a
responsibility to retell reliably that we who drown in a sea of print
can never know. Perhaps, as we Black Bears wrote down our stories, we
were as close as we can be to our Karuk neighbors in this
responsibility. If stories have pleased the listeners, that is good.
They are all true -- even the ones that disagree with each other.
The message. Tell your stories. Write them. Share them.

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